Recently I have been dealing with someone trying to open a bunch of Credit cards in my name. Just wanted to throw out there to check your reports from all three credit agencies. I have had to freeze my credit at all three and dispute a handful of pulls 
I seem to get a letter from a healthcare or insurance provider every other month about how my stuff was stolen; then they send a cute offer on how they’ll pay for credit monitoring for a year. I’m sure there are lawsuits out there from others, but I feel like they should have to pay the piper back to us.
I found a thread here a year or so ago and everyone recommended freezing your credit, seems like the only thing to do now days
Yep, I freeze my credit and only unlock when I am applying for something that requires credit check. To each their own but that $5 a month gives me that piece of mind I guess.
My son had his identity stolen a couple years ago. The perpetrator bought a brand new $80,000 Audi that Audi financed under his name. The creep had stopped my son’s mail delivery and was picking it up personally to steal his information. He eventually got caught many months later when the police responded to a domestic dispute and ran the VIN number on the Audi to find it having been stolen. Trying to convince the credit bureau agencies to remove all the damage done to my son’s credit has been a nightmare. Just a couple weeks ago, a collection agency contacted him to try to collect on a $700 past due phone bill that the perpetrator had in his name.
To each their own but that $5 a month gives me that piece of mind I guess.
Is that something that does all 3 bureaus or just one? All three bureaus have free freeze/unfreeze, they are required to, but they all also offer subscription services that they make easier to find. $5 seems reasonable if it does all three vs having to do each manually but just letting you know.
Also be aware of the difference between a “lock” and a “freeze”. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/credit-lock-and-credit-freeze
My son had his identity stolen a couple years ago. The perpetrator bought a brand new $80,000 Audi that Audi financed under his name. The creep had stopped my son’s mail delivery and was picking it up personally to steal his information. He eventually got caught many months later when the police responded to a domestic dispute and ran the VIN number on the Audi to find it having been stolen. Trying to convince the credit bureau agencies to remove all the damage done to my son’s credit has been a nightmare. Just a couple weeks ago, a collection agency contacted him to try to collect on a $700 past due phone bill that the perpetrator had in his name.
Thats crazy. I would want to find whoever was causing that pretty bad.
Keep your credit frozen all the time unless you’re opening a line of credit. There is simply no need to keep your credit unfrozen and be susceptible to identify fraud. I can be ready to apply for a loan/credit card/etc, unfreeze my credit, they run my credit, and freeze it again all within about 15 min.
If anyone here doesn’t already freeze your credit, I highly suggest doing it. It’s incredibly easy to do and the most effective method of identify theft prevention. The phrase an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure comes to mind.
I have both my wife and my credit frozen. I did get a letter in the mail a while back saying one of my daughters health care info had been compromised and it got me thinking if I should freeze my kids credit as well. Looked into it a bit and it sounds like a little more work than freezing an adults credit. Its on my list of things to do, but definitely forgot about it until reading this. Anyone else have one of their young children’s credit frozen?
I recently had someone gain access to my debit card and received a fraud alert. I quickly verified that was not my activity and the card was shut down. There were two transactions for a restaurant and movie theatre in Nashville, both of which were disputed and corrected. I then received a replacement debit card, had it at home, never used and twelve days in I get a fraud on my new debit card. Again, hasn’t even been used. Those transactions were also disputed and corrected. Less than a week later I get a fraud alert on my Prime card. Once again, verified that was not my activity and disputed those charges and had them corrected. There sure are a lot of low life people out there.
Its a racket. I created accounts at all 3 agencies last year because of a similar discussion here. I created accounts and locked my credit at all 3. Today I cannot login to equifax and experian wants to charge me a new monthly fee to lock my credit. Transunion is the one unchanged and still locked.
It seems that for whatever reason the credit unions are more prone to getting their debit cards hacked. I was with Wells Fargo for like 30 years NEVER had card hacked. My wife was with the local credit union for like 10 years and its been hacked like 5 times and my son twice. So far so good now that I closed the WF account and moved there I havent been hacked yet.
Its a racket. I created accounts at all 3 agencies last year because of a similar discussion here. I created accounts and locked my credit at all 3. Today I cannot login to equifax and experian wants to charge me a new monthly fee to lock my credit. Transunion is the one unchanged and still locked.
Freezing should be free. I did that with all three recently 
It does seem to be a matter of when, not if, this happens. I have a $25/year endorsement on my State Farm Homeowner’s that provides a smaller suite of services and up to $50k in damages. And then I monitor my credit thru the credit reports available thru my bank.
I’ll have to call my agent today, thanks BigWerm!!
called and got it!!
It seems that for whatever reason the credit unions are more prone to getting their debit cards hacked. I was with Wells Fargo for like 30 years NEVER had card hacked. My wife was with the local credit union for like 10 years and its been hacked like 5 times and my son twice. So far so good now that I closed the WF account and moved there I havent been hacked yet.
I think that’s probably just using it somewhere that had a skimmer installed but I don’t know. Credit card skimmers are extremely hard to spot even if you’re looking for it and most people are going to swipe through whatever they’re presented.
In any case I find text message alerts for transactions very useful. Every time a card is used it immediately texts me. The couple times we’ve had fraudulent charges on a credit card I get a text for a charge I don’t recognize, call the bank, and the card is cancelled in 5 minutes after the first small test charge they did instead of letting them rack up a bunch of charges to deal with.
So what would $50,000 of damages consist of? Lawyer fees?
Any fraud that takes place on your cards is not your responsibility. Like others have said here, you call your bank, credit card company and file a claim and the charges are removed. Call me naive, but other than legwork, what other $$ damages are we talking about?
I think that’s probably just using it somewhere that had a skimmer installed but I don’t know. Credit card skimmers are extremely hard to spot even if you’re looking for it and most people are going to swipe through whatever they’re presented.
One case for sure was a skimmer when my wife used it in Houston one summer, but the issues with my son I am pretty sure were not, but who knows.
Mine are frozen too unless I unfreeze them knowing I need to take out a loan. Which is very rare.
Wife and I have both had our US Bank debit cards breached multiple times, it’s not even a surprise when it happens anymore. Have never had any issues getting the charges reversed quickly and getting replacement cards. Our credit card we only use for larger stuff like booking vacations and almost always pay online, never had any issues there.
Brian’s story above is super scary. Time to freeze for sure. Identity theft is a whole different thing than having your card skimmed at Speedway. Yikes.
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